This topic was too good to pass up: EA will try harder to not be one of the worst companies in America. The promise to "do better" comes directly from EA COO Peter Moore himself who acknowledges that work needs to be done to improve the company's status, but that EA also seems to draw in a lot of "undue hate" as well.
This time last year, a poll conducted by a blog affiliated with Consumer Reports named Electronic Arts as the Worst Company of 2012 based on votes submitted by readers, surpassing Bank of America, AT&T, Walmart and numerous others. EA made the list because of the cost of its games and the extra content customers must buy after the initial purchase… in other words, the company will nickel and dime customers to death. EA also seems to scoop up start-ups in order to squash the competition.
"For years, while movies and music became more affordable and publishers piled on bonus content -- or multiple modes of delivery -- as added value to entice customers to buy, video games have continued to be priced like premium goods," the Consumerist stated.
Moore said on Friday that EA was voted to be worse than the companies responsible for the biggest oil spill in history, the mortgage crisis, and bank bailouts that cost millions of taxpayer dollars. Complaints against the publisher ranged from the company's support for SOPA to the ending of Mass Effect 3.
"We can do better. We will do better," he said. "But I am damn proud of this company, the people around the globe who work at EA, the games we create and the people that play them. The tallest trees catch the most wind. At EA we remain proud and unbowed."
He goes on to admit that EA has made plenty of mistakes, including server shut downs too early, games that didn’t meet expectations, missteps on new pricing models, and the "severely fumbling" launch of SimCity (putting it lightly). Some of the complaints EA has received or heard via press are legitimate, while other complaints -- like the always-on feature in SimCity serving as DRM (and it does no matter what he claims) -- are pure garbage.
"In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games," he said. "This week, we’re seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America. That one is particularly telling. If that’s what makes us the worst company, bring it on. Because we're not caving on that."
"We are committed to fixing our mistakes," he added. "Over the last three weeks, 900,000 SimCity players took us up on a free game offer for their troubles. We owed them that."
